I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a paint dispensing apparatus.
II. Description of Related Art
Paint is available in many, many variations of color, shade, brightness, etc. Indeed, there are so many variations of available paint color that it would be completely impractical, if not altogether impossible, for vendors of paint to store each and every color variation in inventory.
Consequently, in order to accommodate the many different variations in color, shade, etc. of paint, it has been the common practice to dispense two or more different colors of paint in varying amounts in order to achieve the final desired paint color. For example, in automotive repair shops it is oftentimes necessary to dispense different paint colors and then mix them together in order to match the paint on an existing vehicle that has been repaired. In order to obtain the desired paint color, it has been the previously known practice to utilize specifications provided by the automotive manufacturer of the required paint colors and then to manually dispense the paint together in a container in accordance with the manufacturer's paint formula. The manual dispensing of paint colors in the automotive repair shop, however, has a number of inherent disadvantages.
First, since the different colors of paint are dispensed together manually, there always exists the possibility of obtaining an incorrect paint mixture due to human error. While minor errors in the paint mixing process may be almost visually imperceptible, larger errors in the paint colors result in a final paint color for the paint that is clearly different than desired. When this occurs, it may be necessary to repaint the vehicle.
A still further disadvantage of this previously known process of manually dispensing the paint colors together in an automotive repair shop is that the dispensing process is labor intensive and, therefore, expensive in labor costs.